The problem of media content misuse and digital rights management (DRM) is both well-known and significant. At the present time, there is no reliable way to provide both video and audio content to end-users while preventing them from making unauthorized, digital copies of the media. To make things worse, digital copies of the media can often be produced without any loss in quality. Furthermore, individuals who acquire a temporary license to use digital media content (i.e., “rent” digital media content) are often capable of circumventing any time restrictions placed on the content. One known weak point in the dissemination of media content from an internet store to a local device, such as a desktop computer, laptop or a smartphone, is the operating system of the local device. Both the operating system and/or the applications running under it, can be easily attacked by the end-user to circumvent any time or duplication restrictions.
What is needed are systems, methods and apparatuses for precluding software-based methods of evading usage restrictions, including time restrictions and content duplication limitations. While other methods of illicit use (e.g., hardware-based or server side software-based) may still exist (due to the very nature of content delivery), these attacks are much more technically complicated than software replication, and fewer numbers of individuals engage in these. Thus, precluding software-only attacks, which is the most widespread form of media content misuse, will severely limit numbers of the individuals capable of such misuse.